larch-5 SVN

gradgrind · 2008-02-28 09:25:59

steve___ wrote:

I am using a duo core 1.83Ghz processor.
real    31m18.531s
user    41m14.639s
sys    2m13.315s

Not bad, I expect it would take all day on my machine.

steve___ wrote:

I was expecting a 16GB iso to test with qemu.

As you've seen, isofs hasn't kept pace with developments. You'd need to shrink your system quite dramatically to get this working. I guess most of it is user data - would it be possible to move that to another partition, so that it can be unmounted before building the larch system? Otherwise I guess you'd have to install a smaller Arch system somewhere and try that.

steve___ · 2008-02-28 20:09:04

Yes this works, thanks.

1) I would like to install openoffice on the new image and then merge those changes back into the iso, is this possible?
2) I suggest putting the larch-5svn doc on your main page.
3) I suggest putting a link to each of the TOC for larch-4 and larch-5svn on your main page under the header of "Docs". On my laptop last week I scrolled past the 'User Guide' and 'Download' and it took me a bit to find the documentation.
4) I assume there is no larch wiki? If I was to create a wiki page should it go on the arch site? faunos?
5) I assume you want /opt/larch-live/session-save/saveovl to be executable?

-steve

Last edited by steve___ (2008-02-29 00:49:33)

paraflu · 2008-02-29 02:23:40

Hello everbody

Gradgrind:

1. I`ve got 2 live cd`s. One made of a runnning via larchify and one with profile xmini.

I copied /boot from /.livesys/medium/ to /dev/my_partition_on_harddisk/
Then i copied from the first cd the /larch directory and the file from the root dir boot.catalog mods.sqf overlay.ovl system.sqf to /dev/my_partition_on_hardisk/001/
done the same from the second live-cd to /dev/my_partition_on_hardisk/002/
copy /boot to the / of /dev/my_partition_on_hardisk/ [here i thought /boot haas to be there because it is independent]
Then boot the hardisk and edit at boot the vmlinux with root=/dev/my_partition_on_hardisk/001/
didnt work complains about couldn`t find larchboot.
so i did /dev/my_partition_on_hardisk/001/larch/ [where larchboot is]
didn`t work either.
So i partition two partition sda1 sda2
copied first cd to sda1
grub install as i mentioned at the harddisk installtion posts before[live-cd on harddisk]
copied second cd to sda2
After that reboot the the harddisk
enter at boot the new parameter for vmlinux : ...vmlinux root=/dev/sda1
enter at boot the new parameter for vmlinux : ...vmlinux root=/dev/sda2
both worked and booted the seperate live-cd`s-image on the seperate partitions.
So my directory approuch didn`t work this way and on a cd/dvd you can`t have two partitions. Mmmh
Now i know that the root= parameter didn`t work with ../directory , i did both with beer so it`s idiot-proof. lol.
Do you know why it didn`t accept this 001/002 [without beer! lol] as an absolute path.

2. By the way the klibc is very restricted. I`ve done some uclinux compiling with gentoo in the past. It didn`t
impressed me as i compared it with the -Os parameter which reached the same binary size. Don`t get me wrong i like uclinux, but klibc is very strange to me and i`ve done very little research about it. But i like uclinux in the way to have a non bloated libc and i was impressed about the size of the libary compared to glibc and the embedded work done with it. But there is also dietlibc and archlinux went with klibc. I even don`t know how to compile against klibc. Stupid question: Is it possible to mount the klibc image and add with ldd the missing deps of fuse and sshfs? Busybox and the klibc has a nfsmount but as you know i don`t want to mount the sqfs with nfs [i hope that my security approach with sshfs is not not to far fetched or stupid at all]. So for my part i will try to get archlinux smaller by the way of removing everything i don`t need for the base installation to get a system with sshfs truecrypt and what i mentioned before. I begin more and more to doubt that this is something to accomplish at all, but i don`t like tftp or nfs to mount the system and as mentioned before and the possibility to have a system over netboot
which could be loaded in the larch way is a good thing [i thing] to secure and restrict the clients in an network. I think this has a speed and a flexibility advantage [sshfs is slower as nfs, i know]. But i will see after i will try to get a small as possibile arch installation.
I am a hobbyist so i i have no experience in a working enviroment at all. So i could be far from the enviroment which is demanded in a professional enviroment.

3. What i want to accomplish:
Every client should have an ide-flash with the possibility to identify itself to the server. To accomplish this it should identify itself with the ssh keyfile and mount the server-delivered-rootfs [when there is a kernel update it has to be updated too [not so good, but possible - special mode with special command to load the filesystem on the flash to ram and the update it].
Every person who use the clients should mount his/her working directory with truecrypt [var tmp home/[client_name} to have an individual-crypted filesystem, where the encryption is on the client side.[for security and performance][the truecrypt part could also belong to the booted root-fs,so it doesnt`t have to be on the initram-image][var and tmp for forensic examination if something has gone wrong on the client or an attack]
No changes of an attacker should be resistent on client and on the server.
No one should be able to plugin an computer and sniff or audentificate to the server.[they could copy the flash image.if they open the hardware or boot with another filesystem.....mmh [tape the usb!.-lol.]
The server could change the delivered root-filesystem for individual use [one program don`t work after update] or special application [cluster or encoding jobs] after worktime or on the weekend.
2 GB [or bigger or smaller] ramdisk with root-fs in the sqfs-way to accomplish fast demand and satureded gigabitlink [125 MB/s]to the clients.[tftp or nfs can accomplished this too, but with more demanding space if the nfs-delivered-rootfs is not larch based, so this is why i like the sqfs`s]. It would be very intersting to see how fast the network get satureded[is really english?]
demanded conditions: Every client machine has to have at least the same graphic hardware otherwise xorg becomes a bitch.
It is not possible to work on an other machine which doesn`t have the ssh-keyfile.[good or bad, not so easy to decide!]
OFFTOPIC: Maybe possible to use a wlan for people to boot another system as an wlan-os-accesspoint, but that is another case.

4. What do think about this at all? I know that you are working at larch `full-time`, but do you ever thought about booting larch-images over an network at all and if you even like the idea [not the sshfs approach, but at all]. If i remember right the script about probing the larchboot file has the ability to be combined with the nfsboot in busybox It should be easy to probe for the sqfs`s after probing for local disks. It should be possible only to append an nfs:[host]://larchboot [could be wrong i have no experience with nfs , just a fast approach]. I`m not asking that you should do this , because it is demanding enough to develop larch at all [and i don`t like people if they `demand` from opensource projects], but for me to try this it should be far easy because it would be only demand appending the probe for nfs[in the script] to the existing script or if i am skilled enough to change sdx to nfs to see if it possible at all to boot over network with a nfs approach with larch-live initram klibc. What do you thing , is this doable with my limited skills?

4. And this is really OFFTOPIC and has nothing to do with larch at all[And i will will make a topic about it on another subforum at arch, if i will be courageously enough]: Why there isn`t an hardware approach for ltsp with vnc or any other approach in hardware, because it can be done with little software [networking keyboard and the mouse and keep the xserver as an display[only decoding the display, even with mpeg[i know every encoding take time even 1 second] to work with.??

I would like to have anybody else to say something about this, especially somebody with ltsp experience, what he/she has think about this.
Don`t hold back , if this is stupid or another approach is better , tell me about it. It is better for me to not `research` this further if somebody has thought about it before and has more experience or skills in this topic and can tell me about it where i have gone the wrong way in thinking about a maybe non existing problem.

By the way it would be nice to know what anybody could tell me about this. It is nice that steve___ also post here. Because till now and after wantilles i thought i am the only one who gives gradgrind feedback.[even if wantilles wasn`t to nice]. But if nobody says something it could be also be a good sign , because everything work perfectly. :-)

5. What do have in mind for larch-6 or larch-8 , other than get married..lol.?
Because it`s getting perfect or do you have to fight with the changes in arch?
I ask this because, even with my weird ideas , there isn`t to much to do. You have the ability to make running system a live system or usb system. Is the usb-system the next goal[ and its possibilities and restrictions] to expand and concentrade on? Or do would like to have some modulare approach like godane who done an amazing job, but is this different. By the way i like the modular approach which i thing could be perfect for nonnetwork system and as an alternative for zeroinstall and klik which i like both especially zero-install with its userspace install and preserving old lib`s which i thing is good thing for application which are abandoned but still are used or used in a noninternet enviroment. Also i see in the approach to have an squashfs of an application with deps which run even on non updated systems in an noninternet enviroment which is a good thing , espspecially for devolpers which can`t do deliver her/his programs for every distribution [yes i know static lib and shared lib and their advantaged/disadvantages , the danger of nonupdated lib or the confuse about more than the actual libs or exploids like zlib, but if i`m not on the internet it would be nice to have something like the windows exe`s [and their bloat of dll`s).

At weekend i will try to get archlinux down to a smaller size, as mentioned before and after that, i will think about my approach again.

Have a good weekend!

OFFTOPIC:
If there is anything about the internet i would say:

"I thought my ideas are unique, but than i meet the internet."

Hit me!

Thanks for every answer or conclusion!

gradgrind · 2008-02-29 07:29:07

steve___ wrote:

Yes this works, thanks.
1) I would like to install openoffice on the new image and then merge those changes back into the iso, is this possible?

I'm not quite sure what you mean, but probably the best thing to do in this case would be to install it on the system from which you built the image (assuming you still have that system) - e.g. using pacman with the '-r' option - and then rebuild the image. For making changes to an existing image, you are better off working with a usb-stick system.
You can install a larch system to a USB-stick - if your system is now small enough to fit on a usb-stick (to run this in an emulator you'll probably need a special boot iso, but that is also no problem, see 'usb2bootiso' script). Or if you modified the 'usbboot' script to stop it stomping on the MBR of the disk, you could also install it to a hard disk partition - or maybe it's possible to install your system to the virtual disk of the emulator ...

steve___ wrote:

2) I suggest putting the larch-5svn doc on your main page.
3) I suggest putting a link to each of the TOC for larch-4 and larch-5svn on your main page under the header of "Docs". On my laptop last week I scrolled past the 'User Guide' and 'Download' and it took me a bit to find the documentation.

I'll bear this in mind when I do the next update.

steve___ wrote:

4) I assume there is no larch wiki? If I was to create a wiki page should it go on the arch site? faunos?

http://wiki.faunos.com/index.php/Main_Page#Larch_Wiki

steve___ wrote:

5) I assume you want /opt/larch-live/session-save/saveovl to be executable?

No, it's 'sourced' by the shutdown script, so this is not needed.

gradgrind · 2008-02-29 08:05:33

paraflu wrote:

Hello everbody
Gradgrind:

1. I`ve got 2 live cd`s. One made of a runnning via larchify and one with profile xmini.
I copied /boot from /.livesys/medium/ to /dev/my_partition_on_harddisk/
Then i copied from the first cd the /larch directory and the file from the root dir boot.catalog mods.sqf overlay.ovl system.sqf to /dev/my_partition_on_hardisk/001/
done the same from the second live-cd to /dev/my_partition_on_hardisk/002/
copy /boot to the / of /dev/my_partition_on_hardisk/ [here i thought /boot haas to be there because it is independent]
Then boot the hardisk and edit at boot the vmlinux with root=/dev/my_partition_on_hardisk/001/
didnt work complains about couldn`t find larchboot.
so i did /dev/my_partition_on_hardisk/001/larch/ [where larchboot is]
didn`t work either.
So i partition two partition sda1 sda2
copied first cd to sda1
grub install as i mentioned at the harddisk installtion posts before[live-cd on harddisk]
copied second cd to sda2
After that reboot the the harddisk
enter at boot the new parameter for vmlinux : ...vmlinux root=/dev/sda1
enter at boot the new parameter for vmlinux : ...vmlinux root=/dev/sda2
both worked and booted the seperate live-cd`s-image on the seperate partitions.
So my directory approuch didn`t work this way and on a cd/dvd you can`t have two partitions. Mmmh
Now i know that the root= parameter didn`t work with ../directory , i did both with beer so it`s idiot-proof. lol.
Do you know why it didn`t accept this 001/002 [without beer! lol] as an absolute path.

I'm not sure I understood much of that - even without beer - but I think the answer should be something like:

The larch start-up scripts look for a file 'larchboot' in directory 'larch' on each device they can mount, so if you want a partition to be recognized as containing a larch system, it must have /larch/larchboot.

paraflu wrote:

2. By the way the klibc is very restricted. I`ve done some uclinux compiling with gentoo in the past. It didn`t
impressed me as i compared it with the -Os parameter which reached the same binary size. Don`t get me wrong i like uclinux, but klibc is very strange to me and i`ve done very little research about it. But i like uclinux in the way to have a non bloated libc and i was impressed about the size of the libary compared to glibc and the embedded work done with it. But there is also dietlibc and archlinux went with klibc. I even don`t know how to compile against klibc. Stupid question: Is it possible to mount the klibc image and add with ldd the missing deps of fuse and sshfs? Busybox and the klibc has a nfsmount but as you know i don`t want to mount the sqfs with nfs [i hope that my security approach with sshfs is not not to far fetched or stupid at all]. So for my part i will try to get archlinux smaller by the way of removing everything i don`t need for the base installation to get a system with sshfs truecrypt and what i mentioned before. I begin more and more to doubt that this is something to accomplish at all, but i don`t like tftp or nfs to mount the system and as mentioned before and the possibility to have a system over netboot
which could be loaded in the larch way is a good thing [i thing] to secure and restrict the clients in an network. I think this has a speed and a flexibility advantage [sshfs is slower as nfs, i know]. But i will see after i will try to get a small as possibile arch installation.
I am a hobbyist so i i have no experience in a working enviroment at all. So i could be far from the enviroment which is demanded in a professional enviroment.

There are several possibilities:
You could add what you need to the initramfs, either directly, or as an archive which is unpacked before use.
Or you could put what you need into a squashfs archive, using chroot (or symlinking, or library redirection ...) to access it.
These methods will of course mean you have to include glibc and, and, and ... . If you wanted smaller utilities, you could compile them against uclibc - klbc probably won't work, it is missing too much for most normal programs.

paraflu wrote:

3. What i want to accomplish:
Every client should have an ide-flash with the possibility to identify itself to the server. To accomplish this it should identify itself with the ssh keyfile and mount the server-delivered-rootfs [when there is a kernel update it has to be updated too [not so good, but possible - special mode with special command to load the filesystem on the flash to ram and the update it].
Every person who use the clients should mount his/her working directory with truecrypt [var tmp home/[client_name} to have an individual-crypted filesystem, where the encryption is on the client side.[for security and performance][the truecrypt part could also belong to the booted root-fs,so it doesnt`t have to be on the initram-image][var and tmp for forensic examination if something has gone wrong on the client or an attack]
No changes of an attacker should be resistent on client and on the server.
No one should be able to plugin an computer and sniff or audentificate to the server.[they could copy the flash image.if they open the hardware or boot with another filesystem.....mmh [tape the usb!.-lol.]
The server could change the delivered root-filesystem for individual use [one program don`t work after update] or special application [cluster or encoding jobs] after worktime or on the weekend.
2 GB [or bigger or smaller] ramdisk with root-fs in the sqfs-way to accomplish fast demand and satureded gigabitlink [125 MB/s]to the clients.[tftp or nfs can accomplished this too, but with more demanding space if the nfs-delivered-rootfs is not larch based, so this is why i like the sqfs`s]. It would be very intersting to see how fast the network get satureded[is really english?]
demanded conditions: Every client machine has to have at least the same graphic hardware otherwise xorg becomes a bitch.
It is not possible to work on an other machine which doesn`t have the ssh-keyfile.[good or bad, not so easy to decide!]
OFFTOPIC: Maybe possible to use a wlan for people to boot another system as an wlan-os-accesspoint, but that is another case.
4. What do think about this at all? I know that you are working at larch `full-time`, but do you ever thought about booting larch-images over an network at all and if you even like the idea [not the sshfs approach, but at all]. If i remember right the script about probing the larchboot file has the ability to be combined with the nfsboot in busybox It should be easy to probe for the sqfs`s after probing for local disks. It should be possible only to append an nfs:[host]://larchboot [could be wrong i have no experience with nfs , just a fast approach]. I`m not asking that you should do this , because it is demanding enough to develop larch at all [and i don`t like people if they `demand` from opensource projects], but for me to try this it should be far easy because it would be only demand appending the probe for nfs[in the script] to the existing script or if i am skilled enough to change sdx to nfs to see if it possible at all to boot over network with a nfs approach with larch-live initram klibc. What do you thing , is this doable with my limited skills?

You won't know whether your skills are too limited until you've tried, tried and tried again! I think if this is something you really want, it should be possible, but I have too little experience in this area to tell you how easy/hard it would be. To me it sounds like it should be possible, but I can't say any more. (oh, I guess 'satureded' -> 'saturated')

paraflu wrote:

5. What do have in mind for larch-6 or larch-8 , other than get married..lol.?
Because it`s getting perfect or do you have to fight with the changes in arch?
I ask this because, even with my weird ideas , there isn`t to much to do. You have the ability to make running system a live system or usb system. Is the usb-system the next goal[ and its possibilities and restrictions] to expand and concentrade on? Or do would like to have some modulare approach like godane who done an amazing job, but is this different. By the way i like the modular approach which i thing could be perfect for nonnetwork system and as an alternative for zeroinstall and klik which i like both especially zero-install with its userspace install and preserving old lib`s which i thing is good thing for application which are abandoned but still are used or used in a noninternet enviroment. Also i see in the approach to have an squashfs of an application with deps which run even on non updated systems in an noninternet enviroment which is a good thing , espspecially for devolpers which can`t do deliver her/his programs for every distribution [yes i know static lib and shared lib and their advantaged/disadvantages , the danger of nonupdated lib or the confuse about more than the actual libs or exploids like zlib, but if i`m not on the internet it would be nice to have something like the windows exe`s [and their bloat of dll`s).

I would like to have larch sort of 'finished' sometime, at least my part in it, but of course the constant changes in hardware, Linux and Arch do sometimes feel like a bit of a fight/challenge to be answered. I rarely have plans beyond the current version, but I always have more ideas than I could ever put into practice, and plenty of other projects just waiting for my attention. I don't think the getting married will be happening soon (as it already happened rather a long time ago!).

I too like the modular approach, including the bundled apps like that other operating system (though not for everything), and I hope godane and/or others keep plugging away at it.

Arch Linux

#51 2008-02-28 09:25:59

Re: larch-5 SVN

#52 2008-02-28 20:09:04

Re: larch-5 SVN

#53 2008-02-29 02:23:40

Re: larch-5 SVN

#54 2008-02-29 07:29:07

Re: larch-5 SVN

#55 2008-02-29 08:05:33

Re: larch-5 SVN

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